Seed Treatment Selections - Plan Now!

Choosing a treat means balancing the factors affecting your seeds that are most important to you.  You can’t fix a stand once it’s in the ground, so protecting your seed’s genetic potential from the minute it hits the soil is so important.

Click HERE  or the picture below to watch Luke’s video regarding seed counts and seed treatments.  OR, check out the thoughts and pics the Pro Coop team took last year below.

Four Major Factors:

1.       Disease.  These are mainly the root rots caused by Fusarium, Pythium, Ascochyta, Rhizoctonia, and many more.  Dryer soils doesn’t mean there’s no chance of root disease.  It just means that depending on the pathogen, you can have higher pressure of one and lower pressure of the other.

2.       Vigor.  Does the seed have the proper nutrition within to STRONGLY germinate and aggressively form an extensive root system?  What if you can get the seed to germinate in conditions where you don’t have the best seed to soil contact?  Good germination doesn’t always equal good vigor!  Biostimulants are an evolving tool in ag and encompass things like enzymes, seaweed extracts, bacteria, and other biologicals that trigger certain responses in seeds and seedlings that normally would be delayed or not happen under certain conditions.  Using them in the right combination with nutrients ON THE SEED can make a huge difference.   

3.       Insects.  Wireworms, Cutworms, Pea Leaf Weevil, Grasshoppers.  There was a ton of wireworm pressure in 2020 in several crops.  And the damage doesn’t always look obvious (large patches of poor stands).  A pruned up root system means less nutrient and water uptake.

4.       Environment.  (Too Cold, Too Dry, Too Wet).  Another area where biostimulants can help.

With the technologies in today’s chemistries, there are ways to address all 4 of those factors.

·       Tired of treating for wireworms just to find out you made them mad for awhile and they came back with a vengeance?  Terraxa F4 is here and is the first product in 15 years that KILLS them.  

·       What about providing getting maximum root establishment from the start to hedge against dryer topsoils?  Look at Precede alone or a combination of a fungicide plus Precede.

·       Want 1 seed treatment for your pulses and cereals?  Have us create a custom blend of Evergol Energy + Precede.  This can be done in 120’s for ease of pumping into your treater.  It’s a unique combination of root rot protection plus the nutritional and biostimulant benefits.  It is crucial to let us know you are interested as this is a custom blend ordered to your quantities – we need a little lead time.

·       We have several other options that can be used in combination to find the right balance of protection and vigor.  Obvius and CruiserMaxx Vibrance Pulse are still great options at an economical price for pulse crops.  Raxil Pro Shield and CruiserMaxx Vibrance Cereals bring a good balance of fungal and insect protection at an attractive cost.

Remember – there’s a ton of options but they don’t need to be complicated.  Let’s visit about what’s most important to you and we will come up with a plan.  All of these are stocked in several sizes at Pro Coop except the custom blends.

If you are considering hedging some risk in what seems like a dryer spring, I’d encourage you NOT to skip seed treatments.  It is so crucial to get a good root system going early.

Thanks and chat with you soon.

Luke